This invention relates to a process for the metallo-thermic reduction of beryllium oxide, beryllium minerals, as well as mixtures of beryllium containing metal oxides.
Metallic beryllium has been produced on an industrial scale already for many years chiefly in accordance with two processes known in the art.
The main difficulty in the production of beryllium on an industrial scale results because beryllium has an extremely high toxicity , chiefly when beryllium is in the form of easily volatile compounds, especially beryllium chloride BeCl.sub.2 and beryllium fluoride BeF.sub.2. On the other hand, with beryllium oxide it has been extremely difficult to directly reduce it to metal.
Therefore, the two known processes for the production of metallic beryllium are based on the reduction of beryllium chloride by electrolysis in a bath of molten salts or on the reduction of beryllium fluoride with metallic magnesium.